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LONDON - The Olympics officially begin with Friday's opening ceremonies and that can only mean one thing.

It's a big day in the Twitterverse!!!!!!!

Here was British diver Tom Daley's take on this momentous occasion.

“I can't believe the @Olympics@London2012@Olympics2012 start today!!!! So excited!! So #FF (sorry, I have no idea what that means) goes to @PeterWaterfield my synchro partner for the games.

To be clear, Waterfield is his partner in synchro diving, not synchro swimming. Now that would be a trending topic.

But Daley isn't the only athlete excited by the start of the London Games. Here's the remarkable Oscar Pistorius, the double amputee from South Africa who's qualified for the 400 metres.

“Good MORNING! The @London@Olympics Start Today! (unclear what the deal is with capitals but let's move on) Can't believe this day is finally here!! Who is excited!!?:) Well I certainly am because you don't often see the double exclamation mark, question mark, emoticon combination, the natural hat-trick in tweeting. Or maybe you do and I haven't been paying attention.

Onwards.

Here was a post from someone, or something, that just said, Olympics.

“24 hours to London 2012! Woohooo!”

Yes, that says it all, even if you're not quite sure what it says.

Individual Olympiads tend to develop their own themes. Sydney in 2000 was the fun games. Atlanta in 1996 was the disaster games. Athens in 2004 was the crisis games. Beijing in 2008 was, well, we're still not sure but the Games were spotless and organized with a militaristic precision which, I guess, is what you'd expect from a totalitarian state.

This brings us around to London. At the outset of the Games, it's hard to believe the Twitheads and Twittering classes can upstage the athletes and their performances. But the noise created by social media here is so loud, it's drowning out the important stuff which, if memory serves, is the competition.

Games organizers, moreover, love this. They love the connection between athletes and fans. They love the faux-intimacy created on Twitter and Facebook. Mostly, they love that free access is available to an audience of more than 100 million and athletes can talk over the heads of the mainstream media to the adoring public.

True, the questions from the credentialed media tend to be a little tougher than the following exchange, posted on Olympic Athletes Hub as part of a Q and A with Soviet pole vaulting star Yelena Isinbaeva:

Q: If you could give any advice to young athletes, what would it be?

A: Once you are on the track you just think about your performance. Believe in yourself, your family, country and fans.

Yes, but what about world peace?

But isn't that the point. There were no unpleasant questions about expectations, the spectre of failure, the inhuman pressure of these Games. There are just happy thoughts and overwhelming positivity, most easily identified by our friend the exclamation mark!!!!!

“It's finally here, the day that kicks off the last 12 years of my life!” posts British swimmer Keri-Anne Payne. “Can't wait for the Games to start!”

Yes, there was a lot of that going around on Friday.

The downside you ask? Well, it's possible you might post a vile, racist tweet, get booted out of the Games and generate international headlines. That is what happened to Greek triple jumper Voula Papachristou earlier in the week. Or you could post a link to a porn website, as the San Jose Sharks' Logan Couture did on Thursday. Couture - who technically isn't an Olympian, at least not yet - then offered up the modern-day equivalent of the dog ate my homework when he claimed his Twitter account had been hacked.

But even if the perils are there for everyone to see, the benefits of social media far outweigh the dangers.

You can, for example, be one of the exclusive 17,435,661 followers of LeBron James. Or one of Kobe Bryant's 13,657,494 subscribers.

Why, just recently, Kobe posted a video where he talked, among other things, about his new goatee!!!

Kobe:“It's part of my mountain-man look. When I have this goatee growing it means I'm going pretty intense on the training.”

Now, how can the mainstream media compete with that kind of content?

Jamaican sprinting star Usain Bolt, for his part, can only claim 7,670,401 followers, but that didn't stop him from being one of the top-trending athletes on Athletes Hub. And he still found time to thank his people.

“You have been some of the greatest fans I have,” he posted, without benefit of one exclamation mark.

Apparently he's saving that for the actual Games. Like everyone else here, I find that very exciting.

Sorry, very exciting!

ewilles@theprovince.com

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The Twitter Games! IMO, so very exciting!!!!

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